The Minister of Health, Maggie De Block, was interviewed as part of the RTL INFO 19H this Sunday. A few hours earlier, she had participated in a meeting of the select committee of ministers of the federal government.
We presented him with two questions that come up frequently in the messages you send us via the orange Alert us button or on Facebook.
Simon François: A question sent by Laurent. Are we able to deal with 200 or 300 cases simultaneously?
Maggie De Block: Obviously, we have winter flu every year. There we had it but it was not as acute as in other years. When you have an acute winter flu, you have more than 300 or 500 people who need special care. Yes, we have enough capacity in our hospitals. We even did a worst case scenario (note: worst case scenario), as if all the infected people were also very sick. But we know that 80% of people are not sick, 15% are sick but can still be treated at home or a few days in the hospital and then at home, and only 5% of people are really seriously ill, and that it is mainly people over 80 and especially men.
Simon François: Why do we let people from contaminated countries come back without preventive control? Is it possible to control tourists, Belgians who return from countries like Italy or France, to control them a priori?
Maggie De Block: Scientifically, this is not possible. Because first of all there is the incubation time. It means that we are infected but the virus is not active. And also there is, in 80% of the contaminations, there is no symptom. So it’s scientifically impossible to have a method… The temperature or something else to really know if the person is not affected by the virus.
> RTL INFO answers your many questions about the epidemic with the help of specialists
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